


On My Sleeve

by linearoundmythoughts



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Beyond the Breach, Gen, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Symbolism, Tattoos, Unrequited Love, godzilla?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linearoundmythoughts/pseuds/linearoundmythoughts
Summary: Masochism jokes, recovering from the legendary, disastrous Newt & Hermann meet IRL incident of 2017, and the significance of why Newt gets kaiju tattoos (it's notjustbecause they look cool). Written for the Beyond the Breach fanbook that was published in 2015 and is now out-of-print.





	On My Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

> My original notes for this were as follows:
> 
> "I wrote this small fic for the Beyond the Breach Pacific Rim fanbook that was published in 2015 about an important moment forever remembered, expecting things to be more than what they are, being misunderstood, and why one of my favorites has too many tattoos. I’ve always been fascinated with the almost spiritual ramifications of the meaning behind what people decide to get inked; it’s a broad topic, so, this is my two-years-worth-of-theorizing, condensed into two pages! Also, silliness. I can’t write about these nerds without some jokes :3"
> 
> Because it's impossible to buy the book now, I thought I would post it here.

He thought Hermann was going to like them. Why would he _not?_

“I thought he was going to like them,” Newt said, again. He knew he was repeating himself, even in his head, but he was still pissed about it. “He didn’t even say anything about them! I caught him staring at them a few times, more like _glaring_ , but I can’t read his facial expressions _at all_ , so, I think it was like, glaring, out of _disgust_ or—something.”

“Stay still,” his tattoo artist reprimanded, pushing Newt’s forearm against the armrest.

“ _Ow,_ fine, sorry,” he responded sardonically, trying to not wince. His artist looked up from her work with the marker for a moment to glare at him. _Man,_ he did _not_ enjoy being glared at. Well. Maybe a little. Just a bit. OK, he wasn’t going to go there, but—

She looked back down at her work, focusing on where to place the marker next. “Why did you think he was going to like them?” she asked, tone flat, her mind clearly elsewhere.

“He always liked the pics of them on Instagram,” Newt let out his breath in an exhale that was more like a chuckle, like he was letting something uncomfortable out of his chest with the sound. “Also, I thought he might just…get it. He gets a lot about me no one else does.” He bit his lip. “Or, well, he used to.”

Newt had the whole conversation planned out in his mind: it was _supposed_ to have taken place on that train, a few months ago, in the summer, before he returned to the L.A. Shatterdome, before Yamarashi, before 2017 turned out to be one of the most messed up years of Newt’s life. Hermann was going to be sitting across from Newt on that stupid train, and Newt was gonna roll his sleeves up, and then Hermann was going to look at them and then look at Newt and say, _I understand why you get those done, why you_ must _; it’s the same reason I work on chalkboards, because sometimes you need to_ see _the thing on which your mind is fixed. Dealing with it in theory is not enough._

Hermann was going to _get it_ because he had to, he _had to,_ how else could Newt have gone all this time thinking Hermann _got him_ and then find out it wasn’t _true_? That would mean he didn’t get the point of why Newt had asked if they could finally meet in person, either.

Hermann was _supposed_ to get it, like in some cultures, tattoos are for criminals, and that’s what Newt felt like being in K-Sci, like he’d become some so-called ‘bad guy’ that everyone has to collab with in order to get the job done (because the bad guy’s got the skills the heroes need and they have to let him work on his _own_ terms as a trade off; because that’s what the higher ups had to figure out about Newt the last two years, after all the damned psych evals and trips to HR so he could be “reminded” of how to “conduct” himself).

Hermann was supposed to get how Newt _knew_ the kaiju were _bad_ , of course he did, he _hated_ violence, and that’s the same reason he hated that humanity had no way to deal with the kaiju other than to kill them. If only there was a way to communicate with them…sure, _maybe_ they came here just to kill everyone on purpose. But what if they’re just soldiers following orders, they don’t have a say in it, they’re just doing their job, or they’re lost and confused, or _something_.

Humanity has a long history of killing without discrimination or purpose…his father used to tell him that, that Newt’s heart was too big. Humanity’s evil used to bother him too much as a kid; he knew Godzilla _was_ the bad guy sometimes, but it didn’t make seeing him get hurt on screen any less sad. Newt questioned all of this. The morality of it—morality in _general_ —drove Newt in circles. The PPDC was doing the right thing, sure, but at the cost of blindly killing alien life just because they lacked the science, the _knowledge_ to understand it…all his research did was help bring the creatures down faster. Newt felt more responsible for killing the kaiju than the Rangers, sometimes. No one else, _no one else_ , was going to feel that way about it, so he might as well pay respects, in his own way, for every kaiju he helped kill, because he’d completely failed to deal with them any other useful way. It had to be done, and he was the only one to do it. In a way, he mourned them—and the loss of their potential, because he couldn’t learn about them fast enough.

 _That_ was why he wore them on his skin, why he insisted on carrying these permanent images of them. Newt knew what it was like to be seen as a monster, to be misunderstood. He’d thought Hermann knew that about him, too. That he understood that, or at least come _close_.

“And so of course, you know me. Another kaiju down, so I come get more ink done,” Newt finished.

“What, because you’re a pain junkie? I don’t care if this is therapeutic for you, just don’t get weird on me,” his artist replied.

Alright, sure, he got a lot of questions about that—the pain thing, and okay, it’s not _untrue_ but—

“It’s because my ink looks _awesome_ , excuse you, and I love adding to it!”

“ _My_ _work_ looks awesome, excuse _you_ ,” she corrected Newt, smirking, leaning back away from him. “So, how do you like him?”

“I dunno, it’s hard to explain? For starters,” Newt counted off on his fingers, “He’s super smart, like I have to give the guy that. And secretly? He’s pretty damned funny. Also—”

“I _meant_ Yamarashi.” She pointed at Newt’s forearm, blinking.

Newt’s eyebrows shot up, “ _Oh_ , yeah, no, of course, I love him, lookit how badass!” He twisted his arm around to admire her work. She smiled and reached for her tattoo gun.

“I’ve always understood,” she blurted out, her back turned to Newt while she prepared to work. “You know, I don’t _have_ to take any client I don’t like, right? I get you. I get why you get these done. It’s why I design them, when _no one_ else would deal with your crazy ass.” She drummed her free hand on the tray in front of her. “I’m not a _words_ person. I’d rather do my art. But I get it. _I_ get it. Now, sit still, let me work in peace.”

Newt smiled, and felt his mood soften for the first time in months, while he waited for the first sting. This was going to look _so_ _cool_ …

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
